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Tuesday, December 29, 2015

One Poker-Hen 105

As we get closer to the end of the year, I am thinking more about my new year's resolutions. I'm hoping to add catching up with Kaiji by the end of year to that list. A fanciful dream or reality, there's no way of knowing for sure... On with One Poker!

Thanks to Sonickrazy for the translations and to Crump Biggums for the cleans.

Looks like things are finally underway! Kazuya is pretty correct in the regard that the game has already been decided. If you opened up the hand of heaven and flipped through the cards now, you could tell who gets what and tell pretty much who will be the winner. The only one who knows is Mother Sophie at this moment.

Chang seems convinced that Kaiji has been swept up by the madness of the game. Intoxicated by a high-stakes gamble. I'm curious if that is true. To me, it feels like Kaiji is acting. Like he wants kazuya to see him as a different type of person than who he really is. That "average high stakes mindset" that Kazuya seems to have pegged to Kaiji. Whether he's acting or not, it seems to not have much effect on the game as a whole. 3 decks have been shuffled, and approximately 50% have been discarded. Which leaves 50% of the three decks left. Which is about 77-78 cards. If they shuffled the cards well and no shenanigans have been pulled, then they should be distributed pretty well throughout the deck.

Things have been shorted with this deck cut. Now the amount of times they can play hands is roughly 38 times, give or take depending on where in the middle it was cut. In a game where you can lose with two consecutive loses, 38 seems like a daunting number. But if they start ping-ponging lives back in forth while they are at 5 lives each it could go on for a bit. Of course, that's only if they bet 1 life at a time. What's to stop them from betting 2 or 3 lives, or even going all in!?

That's true, but currently that would mean either replacing Hero with the extra chapter, or making it a 3rd weekly chapter after Akagi is caught up, which Sonic has said he's not interested in doing. Furthermore, 2 chapters a week will cut the gap by 1 chapter a week, which is only 52 of the current 90 chapters.

It's definitely possible, but there's just some caveats that make it more difficult. We'll see what happens next year though.

I just took a careful at the whole Sophie contraption. It looks like it sits on a rail, and the rails lead to holes. So maybe you can bet your own life and if you lose it, the machine drops you down from the structure to your death?

That hand thing completely obscures the cards right? And it has a design pattern that's the size of a card, towards the back. It could be hiding good cards in there to deal on Kazuya's turn or any number of things.

Even if that's not the direction he goes in, I don't think Kaiji should have agreed so quickly to Kazuya's stipulation. It would be just like Hyoudou's son to play a game which screws "fairness" over in favor of being a "real test of superiority" - e.g. "a true king should be able to win no matter what cards he is dealt."

I would like to remind you, that if Kazuya is anything like his father, that isn't the normal view at all. If you remember back to Kaiji's game with Hyoudou, Hyoudou figured out Kaiji's game fairly quickly, but still let Kaiji have a chance to turn the tables on him. The King gave the slave a chance to rise above him. If the slave isn't meant to kill the king, then the king must kill the slave.

Also, if Kaiji hadn't agreed to Kazuya's rules so quickly, Kazuya might be wary later on in the game if he does initiate this supposed 'cheat', if one even exists at all.

Interesting that they cut the deck. It means the card counting strategy the comments mooted earlier is going to be a lot harder to implement. Assuming that the deck was cut exactly halfway and my assuming probability isn't as sketchy as it most likely is, there's roughly a 1 in 11,000 chance of all 12 (or none) of any given value card being in the deck they're playing with, 1 in 725 of exactly 11 (or 1) of them, 1 in 100 of exactly 10 (or 2), etc. So as the card count creeps up, you can become increasingly convinced that there are no more of that card left, but never 100% unless and until the 12th one comes out. The odds of which happening, of course are pretty slim. But when you're betting in lives, how sure do you want to be?